Is there something about liberal-minded men which makes Ed Miliband want to
end their careers? The question is prompted by the Labour leader’s attack on
Ken Clarke at Prime Minister’s questions.

Mr Miliband might have chosen to urge, more in sorrow than in anger, that Mr Clarke be told to correct any misleading impression of being lenient on rape.

The Labour leader instead tried to get Mr Clarke sacked: “The Justice Secretary should not be in his post at the end of the day.”

The merciless instincts of a Brownite attack dog had driven out any idea Mr Miliband might have had of presenting himself as a liberal-minded person who recognised Mr Clarke as a kindred spirit.

Mr Miliband has recently displayed the same intolerance towards Nick Clegg, with whom he refused to share a platform during the AV referendum campaign. One also detected a hint of ruthlessness in Mr Miliband’s conduct during the Labour leadership campaign, when he carved up the liberal-minded front runner, who happened to be his own brother.

One might have thought Mr Miliband would consider it essential to recruit, if not Mr Clarke, Mr Clegg and the other Mr Miliband, then at least a fair proportion of people who share the outlook of those three politicians.

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David Cameron reminded MPs that only last autumn the Labour leader had promised not to accuse Mr Clarke of being “soft on crime”. As the Prime Minister said, “That pledge did not last long.”

Mr Cameron took great care to show that he regards rape as a very serious crime. But he also sounded more ready than Mr Miliband to consider proposals on their merits, and less inclined to shoot from the hip.

The Prime Minister proceeded to patronise his opponent, rather in the way that Tony Blair might once have done: “One of these days the Labour Party is going to realise that opposition is about more than just jumping on a bandwagon.”

There was deep feeling in these exchanges. Mr Miliband and his handlers clearly thought they could use the rape issue, which is deeply emotive, to get at Mr Cameron, whom they yearn to destroy.

Dennis Skinner (Lab, Bolsover) launched a solo attack on the Prime Minister. The Beast of Bolsover turned red with fury as he roared his contempt of “this lousy, rotten Tory Government, propped up by these pathetic Liberals”, after which the noise became too great for us to hear what abuse he was hurling.

Mr Cameron undertook to tell the House “what is happening in the real world, rather than in the dinosaur land” inhabited by Mr Skinner. And that, for Labour, is the worst insult: that this patrician Prime Minister somehow manages to sound more in touch with the real world than they do.